How To View Multitasked Items on Windows Phone

One of the big advantages of the Windows Phone 7.5 (popularly known as “Mango”) is the new multitasking function the update brings to devices. Windows Phone has always done multitasking but it was never clear how it was done and worse, it was difficult for users to figure out what applications where running in the background. To be fair, this really wasn’t that big of a deal. Windows Phone does a fantastic job of managing memory so performance issues rarely came up. Nevertheless, with Mango, Microsoft added a way for you to quickly and easily see all of the apps running on your Windows Phone and select those apps.

In this How To I’m going to show you how to access the multitasking and switch between the apps running on your Windows Phone.

Accessing running applications on your Windows Phone is done by tapping and holding the back button on the device. If you just tap it, this closes the application you are currently viewing or if you are on your Home screen, it will take you to the last app that you started which is running. The key is to tap-and-hold to get to the multitasking viewer.

Tap-and-Hold the Back Button on Your Windows Phone to View Your Running Apps (Click to Enlarge)

Once you have started the multitask viewer, you will see all of your running applications in a left-to-right arrangement of smaller views of the apps display. You can then swipe left or right to pick the application you want to go to then tap it. The app you tap is immediately brought up to full screen so you can begin using.

View of Running Apps on Windows Phone (Click to Enlarge)

As I mentioned before, if you are in an app that you want to close, simply tap the Back button on your Windows Phone. That closes the app completely. Likewise, if you are in an app that you want to keep running in the background, tap your Windows Button to go back to your Home screen. This keeps the app running in the background.

The new multitask viewer in Windows Phone 7.5 is a nice added feature of this new version of the OS and makes it quick and easy to see which apps you have running on your phone. Give it a try!